Guild Wars 2

I’m gonna reply to that with a quote from a wise man that once posted it on the forums in a related topic:

haviz.1340:

An ultimate forum warrior challenge. You can check it yourself, just don’t die because of awesomeness you will feel while running it.

haviz.1340:

10 points wasted in arcane confirms that. And I’m pretty sure I can do okay with no vitality in the hardest content this game offers.

You keep calling points in arcane wasted, but 10% boon duration effectively means that for each might stack you get, you also get +3.5 Power and Condition damage. Given that a good ele build has at least 10, you’re getting 35 Power and Condition damage from Arcana alone. Add the Fury trait to that and the dps you get from 10 points Arcane matches that of 10 points Fire.

haviz.1340:

That’s one hell of a snowflake.

It’s not an attempt at trying to be unique, and the trait/skill choices aren’t there for the fun of it. Everything in the build has a reason and a purpose. Zephyr’s Boon for example, does 3 things: it allows the combination of Magnetic Aura en Arcane Fury to give myself permafury, it increases the effectiveness of my ice field blast finishers (which I get a lot of when I summon Ice Elementals) and it provides me with enough swiftness that I can save Windborne Speed for condition removal rather than needing it for perma swiftness. It may seem out of place but it actually works quite well.

Taldren.7523:

It’s not inconvenient … its a vast minority opinion.

I have as much right to express that opinion as you have right to ignore me. Asking me to shut up however (what the other guy did) is something I’ll simply won’t do.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImgboR1gjDA0DmIZ8QFlHzkjNA-jUCBYgAkIAZPFRjtIcaslhBRNDWVTISZDT5CFA-w

Note that I bring Zephyr’s Boon so I can get perma fury myself. The fact that I can buff others through Frozen Ground+blast finisher is a nice bonus. The same goes for the might from Altruism.

STRanger.5120:

I rolled my warrior as an alt character, Elementalist was the first char I rolled, I’m playing this class since beta and I don’t intend to abandon it.

…

But classes like Ranger or Warrior are just plain boring to me….

The funny thing is, based on your name, I’d have thought you were a ranger playr for sure.

This link should be on the main page of this site, not buried somehwere in the forums…

Zelyhn.8069:

Haha guys I don’t think Haviz automatically assumes any Guardian is support, or at least not any the guardians he plays with!!

Good to know. :-)

But I don’t even need to do this to tell you that with this rotation and your 30 points in arcana you are doing very little damage (to my standards).

I’m sorry, but given that you don’t even see how Arcana adds a lot of Power and Precision through its boon extension, and changed my rotation on the fly, I don’t think I trust your calculations. I’m sure you can calculate the damage coëfficient, but that’s only a third of the actual dps a build can provide.

Avatara.1042:

I do use a signet build, and YES, it is weak. But at least it is stronger than a Glyph build…

Funny. I’m using a glyph build on my staff ele and it’s much stronger than a signet build (though both work well).

You really need to stop your annoying one man crusade against game balance.

I’m sorry if I annoy you, but I’m merely giving my opinion and shring my experiences. Silencing me because it’s inconvenient is not cool man.

We have a greatsword already. Our current options would be sword, mace, pistol, rifle and torch.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

I’m guilty of this crime quite often XD. Course i’m just as guilty when it comes to warriors and assuming there nothing more then a zerker.

The only thing I really assume when I run a dungeon is that people know what they’re doing when it comes to gear and build. I pretty much never ask what kind of build they run. Of course, that has its downsides too.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

I’m a mix of D/D and Staff. I love to use D/D for alot of fights but when we have trouble with some area in term of CC or just distance I’ll pull out my staff.

Hehe, yeah. There’s nothing like putting down a Static Field or Frozen Ground to protect whomever is pulling from initial the warrior NPC rush spike in the Ascalon fractal.

Zelyhn.8069:

So if I am not mistaken you rotation is as follows:
Fire: lava font
Water: Ice spike
Air: proc electric discharge, lightning surge
Earth: stoning four times, eruption
Fire: lava font, flame burst, three fireballs, lava font, three fireballs, flame burst
repeat

That would require you to have pyromancer’s alacrity of course.

The end c/s is 1.14
As a comparison, lightning whip alone has 1.22 c/s

Now plug this number in my calculator with your build and you will see how little damage that deals.

This is because, like I told you, you need arcana to use your spells out of fire, and arcana reduces your damage because its traits are very bad.

Where do you factor in the extra might? Where do you factor in that Arcana gives the ele +100 Power from Sigil of Battle alone? How do you factor in the perma fury?

Where’s the actual calculation itself?

haviz.1340:

This thread is not about viability about about being decent option. Staff is viable, either is running naked. Have you seen a decent group in pve that is using staff ele for its support or cc?

No decent group, because ele isn’t just about support. It’s the combination of damage and support that makes them work. There are plenty of ‘zerker warriors’ that only stay in the fight because of the protection and heals I toss ’em. While still doing damage and buffing them with fury/might as well.

As a counter question, when was the last time you invited a guardian and didn’t automatically assume he was a support character? How often do you ask wheter guardians focus on support or dps? Or do you just assume that all guardians do both perfectly?

I can live with that restriction. :-)

30. Also, I forgot to mention I use Rune of Altruism and Glyph of Elemental Harmony too. That’s another 6 stacks might (and 3 on my party).

I thought you had the numbers ready but very well…

Lava Font, Flame Burst, Ice Spike, Blinding Surge (with Electric Discharge), Stoning (or Shockwave if it’s available) until 1 second before Fire is done, Eruption, Lava Font for might combo.

Add in Magnetic Aura when it’s available (with Zephyr’s Boon for fury), Arcane Fury, Sigil of Battle and Elemental Attunement.

You can compare it to any fire build you’d like, but with the same gear. I’m curious to learn where the build stands dpswise compared to a raw damage fire build. Mind you, I’d like to see the calculations too please.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yep but that comes at a later stage

No harm in comparing skills slot by slot for now, no serious conclusions have to be drawn from that, but it is interesting as a start

You’ll not draw serious conclusions from it, but some people will. We’ve seen what a warrior 100b movie on some orr npcs can do for the community’s view on dps.

What about earth 3?

Edit: That’s a serious question. Is it a leap finisher?

Zelyhn.8069:

The worse thing with staff is that you cannot benefit from FA too much with it, since its damaging element is fire. This means that if you want to use the poor support that staff provides you will have to put points into arcana, and these points reduce your damage potential.

In a 10 second attunement swap chain you can cast Ice Spike, Blinding Surge and Eruption once each. All of them deal twice the damage of Fireball to a larger area. Granted, you miss out on a Lava Font. However, that’s compensated by the large amount of might and fury you get from constantly swapping attunements, as well as the vulnerability your teammates can also benefit from.

If you play support staff well, you may deal a little bit less damage than a full fire focused ele. But it’ll come pretty close.

Zelyhn.8069:

I have run the numbers and TCed staff builds many times, there is nothing to do with it.

I’ll call you on that. Show me your numbers.

Zelyhn.8069:

The title of this thread is “are our skills really weak?” not “is our dps that low?”.
It’s a specific question. When I want to work on dps, like I have done in the past, I make it clear. Here I am comparing skills of other classes to ours, in order to determine if our skills are weaker. Why would I include anything else but the skills in the comparison ??

That’s all fine and dandy, but you’re going at it the wrong way. Let me give you an example:

If I have 2 builds of 2 skills each, that each have the same attack speed on their #1 and #2 skill respectively:

Build 1’s auto attack deals 10 damage and his second skill deals 100 damage every 5 seconds.

Build 2’s auto attack deals 9 damage and his second skill deals 500 damage every 5 seconds.

If you’d only compare the first skill, you’ll see build 2 has a weaker auto attack. But if you compare the whole build, you’ll suddenly see that build 2 deals a LOT more damage than build 1.

Zelyhn.8069:

Yes you are wrong. The stacking limit only applies to weakness and a few other non-damaging conditions.

The leaked patch notes suggest that it’ll be applied to all conditions next patch. Also, the ‘combos usefulness’ issue hasn’t been adressed yet.

What would really help in my opinion is that if there’s some preview a link will be posted on the official site (forums?) so we can watch it.

I know there’s a developer preview on the new skill balance somewhere, but I have no idea how to find it.

If you want to communicate better with your players, start there. Don’t make us guess where we can find information. Give us a link. Please.

I’m still with ArenaNet in the sense that there’s a lot more depth in this game than people give it credit. You can pick any utility you want, any trait and best of all, there’s combos that literally customize your attacks on the fly.

What I see here is mostly warriors that play their profession as a faceroll auto attacker and then complain about being bored.

How many of you play an elementalist or engineer and have the same complaint?

Knote.2904:

ThiBash.5634:

Actually, psychological studies have indicated that people get happier if they have less choices.

This is a game not life. Games that give much more player customization are always better well received.

The studies were about ice cream. Also, show me the statistical evidence of your ‘always’.

People think they’ll happier with more options, but often when they do they’re not happier.

Just look at the elementalist. It’s just as viable as a warrior, but people complain about having to do more for the same effort.

Zelyhn.8069:

Two skills can be compared, I don’t see why not.

Because the result is meaningless when you consider the fact that D/D eles only use their auto attacks when everything else is on cooldown (about 10% of the time) and warriors use them a lot more often (at least 30%).

Comparing single attacks for dps is meaningless because when considering the whole build, the ele’s dps becomes a LOT higher.

Yes I take the two hits of LW into account for the 1.22 c/s figure.

Did you also consider their actual casting times + skill delays?

Zelyhn.8069:

But he is right: staff is really not that great in PvE

Both you and him are wrong, but apparently any argument I come up with is either ignored or dismissed as ‘untrue because I say so’ so I’ll not bother listing any more.

haviz.1340:

Did you even read or just come here from your zerg to say how staff eles are good in zvz?

If that’s supposed to be an insult then rest assured: I’m offended. Offended that you couldn’t come up with anything better than that comment.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Vekk has one or two references in the game but no grave.

Makes sense given Asura cremate their dead, then disperse their ashes (as Vekk did with his father).

CHIPS.6018:

We don’t know how powerful Joko has become. And the most dangerous part about Joko is his mind. This guy is actually high intelligent, unlike the other enemies we seen so far who rely on raw might and power.

If only Joko had been the mysterious enemy instead of Scarlet…

Fortus.6175:

You cant just compare 2 skills, let alone just 2 aspects of it.

A warrior has infinitely better ways to sustain itself and survive in melee than an ele could ever hope too. They have higher hp and higher armor bases, healing signet which is by far the best mindless sustain in the game, hands down. A warrior will be able to stick to you like fire in a dry forest, whereas the ele is being constantly being poured water and cut possible paths.

So true. Which is why I don’t really understand your next comment:

D/D should be the stronger melee weapon given how little survival we have at melee range.

We have quite a few tools for this. We can get perma protection. We have heals in water. We have Shocking Aura. We can step back a bit from the bosses and not get hit so much while still hitting them. We too can use a on-hit signet.

The weapons aren’t easily compared. In fact, given that Lightning Whip hits twice, are you absolutely sure it deals less damage?

haviz.1340:

Exactly. Ele only saving grace in pve are swirling winds. Without it (staff build), ele is completely team dependant and doesn’t bring anything to the team except small fire field while having no survivability.

What about Magnetic Aura + Powerful Auras?

And then you have an Ice Field, a Stun Field. Useless? How about 2 water fields that can be used for blast finishers so others can heal on them, while one of the removes 4 conditions from your team?

Still not convinced? How about the chill/cripple/immobilize AoE removal skill? Or the perma weakness you can stack on bosses with stoning?

Where on earth do you get the idea that staff eles don’t have any form of party support?

mjharrison.3209:

• signet build still kitten weak
• glyph build still kitten weak

Neither of those are true, but you have to actually go out and use the builds rather than theorycraft why they suck all the time.

Why are you so worried about conditions in PvE? Seems like overkill to me, especially since you also have 2 staff skills that can remove conditions.

terminatorkobold.6031:

The topic is about the fact that in a game without holy trinity and a twitch based combact system, no class should arbitrarly have more base stats than other classes. Every clas has traits (offense and defense) skills, dodges, boons so why give some classes a boost in base stats while giving only half a boost to others and nothing to some?

Because not every profession is equally skilled at the things you’ve just mentioned. Healing Power on an ele doesn’t do the same thing as Healing Power on a Mesmer for example.

Caramel Ham.4891:

I had to read your post twice because you have decided to move the goal post from Staff Guardian is garbage in pve to Staff Ele is awesome in pvp. That’s what you call grasping at straws.

My reply was directed at the original post. You don’t have to tell me that it was a highly situational and rare occurance. I just felt like sharing it. :-)

My main reason for playing guardian though is that I find them extremely boring.

Isn’t it possible to use water #5 to ‘leap’ through fire #2 and get a fire aura that way?

Because they deal little damage?

Just held my own against 2 guardians on a non-bunker staff ele in sPvP. So I’d say their damage leaves something to be desired…

It made finding groups a lot easier. Apparently there are lots of people for dungeons, even story mode. Just gotta find them. :-)

darkace.8925:

ThiBash.5634:

More doesn’t equal better.

Less doesn’t equal better, either.

Actually, psychological studies have indicated that people get happier if they have less choices.

ThiBash.5634:

Only 10% of the Guild Wars 1 skills were awesome, and only 30% really useful.

Yeah, that’s a problem totally exclusive to Guild Wars 1. I mean, just look at all those engineers running Throw Mine.

True, but for Guild Wars 1 that’s hundreds of skills. Here’s it’s just a handful. And all weapons are viable at least.

ThiBash.5634:

And balancing was a pain.

That’s why we pay them the big bucks.

Given the fact that Blizzard couldn’t (didn’t?) even balance WoW for the insane amount of money they got each month, I really doubt this is a money issue. In general I mean.

ThiBash.5634:

However, if you must have more skills, play an Elementalist.

You’re missing the point. It’s not about having a bunch of skills, it’s about having the a choice when it comes to skills. If you want to play a hammer-wielding, damage-dealing warrior you’re out of luck. It’s crowd control or find another weapon.

So that means we don’t need more skills, just more choices? I think the real issue here is that people want to play a damage dealer in a game that’s about more than just damage. It’s like wanting to fly an X-Wing through Star Trek Online.

ThiBash.5634:

There’s variety there dude. Just gotta know where to look.

Sure there is. But the variety is restrictive. You can build your character to fill one of several roles, but there’s no variety once you pick that role. You’re always going to be rocking swords and longbows if you want to be a condition-damage warrior. It doesn’t matter if you dislike swords…it doesn’t matter if you really like The Moot…it’s swords or find another role to fill. Period. That’s inflexibility at it’s finest.

So how is this better than games where you have a random weapon that only matters for the attack animation?

The thing you’re forgetting here is that all of this was design intent. The the devs intended to do things differently and wheter you agree with them or not, they’re not gonna change their game design because it’s a LOT of work and would essentially just turn the game back into a WoW clone.

ArenaNet made the choice to make skill sets instead of skill slots. Personally, I think it has worked out relatively well.

Datsuni.4678:

PVE:
As a last question: Could the ppl on anet watch their “manifesto” again and tell the ppl on forums: How is this game’s pve not about “swinging your sword” over and over again?
( like Paul Barnet saying: there will not be a healer going i heal and i heal again / facepalm)

My elementalist wields a staff.

Seriously, try anything other than a warrior and you’ll notice that there’s more to life than just auto attacking.

Hyde.6248:

I probably will only do PVE and WVW when I hit 80 since I’ve never been much of a pvper. I don’t mind being a bit squishy as long as I’m not dying every 10 secs. I want something that can actually contribute to a dungeon run or fractal and not just sit there doing poor dps and barely helping.

Based on what you wrote, all three are good choices. What you really have to ask yourself is how hard you want to work in order to get results. Elementalists and Mesmers take more effort to keep alive, but they can deal damage just as well as a Warrior.

What do you like better: a huge sword, a huge spell or multiple copies of yourself?

FrownyClown.8402:

Warriors your thing then man.

I have no idea how you got to that conclusion.

Wouldn’t that require remodelling all the rifles and pistols in the game?

tigirius.9014:

They need more skills.

No they don’t.

They need to make the traits that increase damage a standard for the five point traits so that we can pick and choose from the traits that make a difference in the skills and how they function rather than wasting some choices just to get that extra 5%.

Not all +damage traits are simply +damage. Many function in a different way (when endurance is full or when endurances is not full are just one of many examples). They want you to choose between more damage and more utility.

They need to make condition damage a non-automatic thing that is only added to the skills for damage when a character chooses a trait line that’s heavy into condition damage. For example, remove all bleeds until that character is traited into grandmaster condition duration/damage trait line.

And modify half the game to do so. Not viable at this point.

They need to make all damage equalized for the purpose of keeping the game honest. For example, engineer #1 rifle shot shouldn’t do less damage in an equal burst zerker damage build with the same gear as a warrior #1 shot.

Balancing individual skills only makes sense when a player can choose between those single skills. In this case, not only does the player choose between 2 sets of 5 skills, they choose between 2 different professions. Factor in the engineer’s other rifle skills, his utility skills and then compare them. At the very least, compare builds, not individual skills.

They need to stop adding more and more hitpoints to pets and finally just buckle down and give them a 90% AOE immunity and the ability to rez their owners even if they are in the non-combat stage, and allow summons and turrets an immunity those few seconds of summoning (2s would do).

This isn’t World of Warcraft. AoE skills function very differently from those in WoW. You can hit stuff in GW2 with your melee weapons without ever targetting them. Many melee weapons have AoE too. You cannot distinguish between them as easily as in WoW, where there were only 2 skill types: directly targetted and a small area in the game. So that solution wouldn’t work.

There’s just alot that needs fixing to make the diversity in combat a real feature in this game.

The diversity isn’t smaller than other games either. They often seem like they have a lot more variation, but often it’s just a bunch of alternatives you’d never use because they’re not viable. When you compare the WoW hunter to the GW2 ranger, you’ll notice that the variety in skills between the Shortbow and Longbow is larger than that of the Survivalist and the Marksman.

Stop playing for a while?

I think most of what you mention is actually intentionally designed that way. In a sense, Guild Wars 2 is costume brawl 2.0 where you pick a weapon and that decides most of your strengths and weaknesses. The benefit of ‘no build has counters to everything’ is that nothing becomes unbeatable, making balance a lot easier. As for combat stagnating, you could try some less obvious combinations and try to make them work.

Or just play engineer or elementalist.

The engineer simply has too many blast finishers for a long lasting water field to be balanced imho.

More doesn’t equal better. Only 10% of the Guild Wars 1 skills were awesome, and only 30% really useful. And balancing was a pain.

However, if you must have more skills, play an Elementalist.

You get 5 weapons with 20 skills each (100 total), 60 traits, 3 healing skills, 20 utility skills, 4 elites, 25 skills from conjured weapons, 4 skills on attunement swap, 4 skills on dodge, 4 skills when falling. That’s 224 skills and THEN you can also combo with your fields of those of other players for even more options or pickup environmental weapons, siege engines or racial skills.

There’s variety there dude. Just gotta know where to look.

Edit: My humble apologies, I forgot the 16 skills you get while underwater. Sorry for that.

Enjoyed listening to it, you have a pleasant voice for telling things. I did however expect something like a summary of the story. This seemed more like a review of the game.

A fix for the ascended ring drops could be to make the salvagable and give a (small) chance to turn into things needed for ascended crafting (like say, dragonite ore which you won’t get if you do a lot of fractals and no bosses).

You’d still have the rest of your build to fall back on. ;-)

No, I see what you mean, but if Churning Earth really is that strong, landing that hit could win you the fight.

oZii.2864:

If it works the same (which would be a good guess) then you can stack up to 5 times whatever the durations are. As soon as 1 of the 5 wears off you can pick up another stack. You don’t have to wait for all 5 of your stacks to wear off before getting another stack.

Retal was changed some time ago like this and my guess is that they are just going to do the other duration boons the same way. You really shouldn’t notice a difference in your boon up time.

But that’s the thing: in the example I gave, there is a difference. Frozen Ground adds 5 stacks of 2 seconds chill. However, if people are using projectile finishers while it is active, each finisher will add 1 stack of 1 second chill.

If something gets hit by Frozen Ground, in the 1st second it gets 2 seconds of chill. Now let’s assume 4 finishers each add 1 second. In the 2nd second it won’t add any chill, because there are still 5 stacks of chill active on the target. Meaning the caster just lost 1 second of chill thanks to the projectile finishers that should make the effect stronger. If all the effects came from people with +10% condition duration, then the 3rd second stack from Frozen Ground will also not be applied because there’s still 5 stacks active (the next stack won’t cease to exist until 0.1 second AFTER the 3rd second would have been applied.

Of course in practice things won’t go as neat as the example, but it still means that combo finishers could steal the place of much stronger effects.

To me, that’s just not right. And while weakness is fairly easy to keep up permanently (in the right builds), chill is not. In fact, most chill effects have a base duration of 2-3 seconds. So losing 5 seconds due to finishers that should enhance the effect is something we really shouldn’t want.

I think I’d rather use Elemental Surge and fire off an Arcane Blast at about 1.9 seconds into the cast. Because most people will dodge at 2 seconds, and you can catch them before they do that way. Maybe combined with Lightning Flash…or Arcane Power, Elemental Surge and Lightning Flash to teleport to them and immobilize them at the same time…and then get a garatueed crit on the Churning Earth as well…